Books › The History of the Violin and Other Instruments Played on with the Bow from the Remotest Times to the Present by William Sandys and Andrew Forster, 1864 › scan 43
Scan 43
The History of the Violin and Other Instruments Played on with the Bow from the Remotest Times to the Present by William Sandys and Andrew Forster, 1864
28 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Thus translated by the able editor, Mr. Edwin Norris—
3 "Blow, minstrels, and tabours;
4 Three hundred harps and trumpets;
5 Dulcimer, fiddle, viol, and psaltery;
6 Shawms, lutes, and kettle drums;
7 Organs, also cymbals,
8 Recorders and symphony."
10The crwth was of early date in Scotland, as well as in England and Wales, and an instrument of this nature was among the ornaments on the outside of Melross Church, founded in 1136.
12Dauney, in his "Ancient Scottish Melodies," quotes from an old poem called the "Houlate," 1450, where are mentioned—
14 "The psaltry, the citholis, the soft atharift,
15 The croude and the monycordis, the gythornis gay;
16 The rote and the recordour, the ribus, the rift," &c.
18Edward Jones, in the "Relics of the Welsh Bards," gives a poetical description of the crwth, written in the fifteenth century by Gruffydd Davydd ab Howel, with a translation. It agrees very much with that given by Daines Barrington, to which we shall presently refer. It is said that Bishop Morgan, in his translation of the New Testament into Welsh, printed in 1567, translated "vials of wrath" by crythan, that is, crwds or fiddles. Hawes, in his "Pastime of Pleasure," of nearly the same date, thus describes the attendants of Dame Music:—
20 "There sat dame Musyke, with all her mynstrasy;
21 As tabours, trumpettes, with pipes melodious,
22 Sakbuttes, organs, and the recorder swetely,
23 Harpes, lutes, and crouddes right delycious;
24 Cymphans, clarycordes, eche in theyr degre,
25 Did sytte aboute theyr ladyes mageste."
27We find the word crowd used for fiddle by the dramatic writers of the seventeenth century. For instance, in
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